


and we may ne'er see you fair ladies again

by Hibou_Gris



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen, Guilt, Missing Scene, Post s2e09 Lesser Evils, Sharks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-10
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:13:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27481765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hibou_Gris/pseuds/Hibou_Gris
Summary: Margo hears the singing from halfway down the hall.
Relationships: Fen & Margo Hanson, Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson, Quentin Coldwater & Margo Hanson & Eliot Waugh
Comments: 15
Kudos: 25





	and we may ne'er see you fair ladies again

**Author's Note:**

> This is a missing scene taking place between Lesser Evils and The Girl Who Told Time, during the three months Quentin spent in Fillory after letting Niffin-Alice go. 
> 
> I tagged it Gen because it's mainly a Margo character study, with Margo & Eliot & Quentin friendship, but there's mention of the canon relationships between Quentin and Alice, and Eliot and Fen's marriage, and some sexual tension between Margo and Quentin, Quentin and Eliot, and Margo and Fen.

The door opens.

“Oh,” Fen says. “Here you all are.”

Here they all are. Here they all fucking are, the three of them, Margo and Eliot and Quentin, in Margo’s bed - and Fen, in the doorway, alone in the doorway, looking at them.

* * *

Margo hears the singing from halfway down the hall. 

“- over land or sea or foam -” Quentin’s voice, loud, off-key, slurring around the edges, echoing discordantly off the stone walls. She turns the corner and sees them, Quentin slumped against the door, eyes closed and face tilted upwards, and Eliot with his arms around him, struggling with Quentin’s dead-weight and against his graceless, inexorable slide down to the floor. 

“No, no, we’re not sitting down, we’re - this isn’t your room, Q -”

“What the shit,” Margo says.

“You can always hear me singing this -” Quentin stops singing mid-lyric, opens his eyes. “Hey! Hey, it’s Margo. Hey, Margo.”

It’s past midnight. She’s spent the whole day dealing with bullshit Wellspring negotiations minutiae, listening to Fillorian hemming-and-hawing and Lorian posturing and holding on to her temper with both fucking hands (not looking at the pale figures lurking at the corners of her eyes, not looking at the gentle swell of Fen’s belly), her neck is sticky with sweat under her hair from the atypically warm Fillorian summer night, her feet are sore from wearing gorgeous but impractical footwear all day - cushioning spells can only do so much - and all she wants is to get into her own goddamn room and collapse on her own goddamn bed.

“Get your ass off my door,” Margo says. Quentin just blinks at her, but Eliot finally gets a good grip under his arms and heaves him bodily away from the door as Margo strides past them to yank it open, hisses at Eliot as she goes by, “I told Tick not to let them overserve him anymore.”

“I think he got another bottle of wine from the kitchen,” Eliot says.

“For fuck’s sake.” Margo stalks through the door into her bedroom, Eliot and Quentin staggering in behind her.

“He’s a king, they’re not going to say no.” Eliot’s voice is grainy with tiredness, and he smells like sweat and salt water; he must have just arrived back from the harbor.

“Stop talking about me like I’m not fucking here,” Quentin says.

“Why _are_ you here?” Margo snaps, and Quentin looks at her with the liquid, reproachful eyes of the saddest lost puppy in the multiverse sitting in the rain in a grimy alleyway.

“I don’t want - can I stay with you again tonight?”

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Margo says. She should have known this would come back to bite her in the ass.

“Again?” Eliot says.

“Don’t give me that look. We didn’t bang, I was making sure he didn’t choke to death on his own vomit.” He’d been hammered, and rambling about Alice - okay, talking about the metaphysics of Niffins but actually talking about Alice, and he’d followed her into her room and curled up on the bed, looking smaller than anyone with four inches on her in height had the right to look. She’d put a wash-basin on the floor next to him, said, “Throw up in my bed and I’ll have you drawn and quartered,” and Quentin had mumbled, “Okay,” and passed out before she’d even finished changing her clothes.

“Where was I?”

“With your very pregnant fucking wife,” Margo says, then regrets it, almost, at the look on Eliot’s face - he tucks it away quickly, but not before she sees.

“Fuck. Fine, put him on the bed,” she says, and turns away, kicks off her shoes and starts unbuttoning the stiff outer layer of her corset-dress. Eliot hauls Quentin the rest of the way across the room and dumps him unceremoniously onto the bed, but then throws himself right down after him, props himself up against the pillows with a deep sigh. Quentin rolls towards him, puts his head on Eliot’s shoulder, and Eliot gives his hair an indulgent pat - apparently this is going to be a full-blown fucking slumber party. 

“Wait,” Quentin says, muffled from where he’s smashed his face against Eliot’s arm, “wait - when you’re married to Idri. Are you all going to sleep in the same bed?”

“No,” Eliot says, fast. Then, “I don’t know, I don’t - we haven’t talked about it.”

“Should probably do that - like, before the wedding.”

“I’ll be sure to add that to my extensive pre-wedding to-do list, ‘discuss sleeping arrangements re: future husband with current wife’.”

“How did things go down at the harbor?” Margo says, because if she has to listen to Eliot talk about the wedding (that _fucking wedding_ ) right now she’s going to lose her entire shit. “I assume you and the crew of the _Orca_ took out the man-eater that’s been terrorizing our sandy shores?”

Quentin jack-knifes upright in the bed, his face lighting up. “Right! Shark! You caught the shark - we were doing the thing -”

“We weren’t doing a thing, _you_ were doing a thing.” Eliot drops his head against the wall. “I told you - I only saw it once, my _Jaws_ references begin and end with ‘you’re gonna need a bigger boat’.”

“Margo knows about the thing,” Quentin says. “The - when they’re drinking together, out on the water, the calm before the -”

“So did you?” Margo asks, interrupting him, looking at Eliot, shimmying out of her dress’s underlayer. Quentin averts his eyes, then crumples backwards until he’s flat on the bed again. “Need a bigger boat?”

“Size doesn’t matter, Bambi.”

“Easy for you to say,” Quentin says, barely audible, because he’s dragging his shirt up over his head for some reason.

Eliot’s eyes slide over to him, and then away; he swallows, says nothing, so Margo finishes putting on the thin slip she’s been wearing to bed ever since this stupid heat wave started, then says, “Keep your damn clothes on, Coldwater. This isn’t that kind of sleepover.”

Not that she hasn’t considered it - she’d thought at first that that was what Quentin was angling for, that night he’d come into her room, had already been opening her mouth, ready with a biting smack-down - and then had stared, baffled, at the huddled drunk mess of him washed up like flotsam in her bed, face soft and eyes already half-shut, any kind of sexual overture clearly the furthest thing from his mind, and she had been - Margo’s not anyone’s fucking mommy, is the thing, that’s just not her bag, unless it’s a sex thing, and even then, it’s not really her kink. She doesn’t get off in any way on tucking sweet sad-eyed boys into bed, and she’s the last person someone should look to if they - if they need taking care of, so this - and frankly, she’d have been less weirded out if it _was_ a sex thing, had for a second imagined crawling on top of him, kissing him until his eyes and face and body woke up, focused, hardened, until he kissed her back - it’s not like comfort sex with Quentin would be an entirely unfamiliar proposition - 

But he’d been so drunk, and it had been less than a week then, since he’d shown up in the throne room stumbling and red-eyed, blurting out, “I let her go. I - Alice. Alice. I let her _go_ -” and he was still talking about Alice (and very conspicuously _not_ talking about Julia - fuck, why did everything always have to go to shit at the exact same time), and the whole idea had suddenly seemed kind of fucked up, so she’d stepped back from the bed, gone and gotten the wash-basin for him instead. 

“I’m not -” Quentin says, scrunching his face up. “I just - it’s hot.”

“We didn’t need a boat at all,” Eliot says, slightly too loud. “As it turned out. Wrong narrative - think _Dragonheart_ , or oh, every single episode of _Scooby-Doo_.”

“It was a hoax?” Margo says. “But what about -”

“You do too know about the _Jaws_ thing,” Quentin says. He’s staring up at her balefully. “You told me, remember, we - it’s a dad movie, you watched it a million times with your dad -” 

Eliot looks over, his face gone sharp and surprised; Margo grinds her teeth together and doesn’t make eye contact. She slides onto the bed next to Quentin, gives him a tender smile, then grabs him by the chin.

“Hey, you want to sleep in here?” Margo says.

“Ow - _Margo_ -”

“Do you. Want to sleep in here?”

Quentin glares at her, then sniffs, looking away. “Yeah.”

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Yes, please, Mistress Margo, o beauteous Queen, please grant my humble request,” Quentin says with a bitchy eye-roll, even as he drunkenly mangles the entirety of the word ‘beauteous’.

“I thought this wasn’t that kind of sleepover,” Eliot says. “Because if we’re role-playing, I’m going to need some time to delve into my character’s motivation and backstory.” They both ignore him. 

“Then shut the fuck up about _Jaws_ ,” Margo says, doesn’t add, _and about my dad._

“Fine,” Quentin says, his voice sour - but there’s a clear undertone of hurt, the faintest hint of a tearful edge, and Christ, the last thing they need is for IrritatinglyEnthusiasticDrunk!Quentin to wobble over into WeepyMaudlinDrunk!Quentin, so she lets go of his chin, gives his cheek a friendly pat, and then relaxes back onto the bed next to him, snuggles close, pressing her side against his bare arm and shoulder despite the room’s still sultry heat. 

Quentin leans into her with a sigh, closes his eyes, the hard frowning line of his mouth easing - she looks up, and Eliot’s watching him, watching them, and his face is unguarded, and it’s - 

She can’t go to sleep yet, she still has to take her make-up off, free her hair from the dozens of pins holding it in place, but she’s tempted to close her eyes too, just for a second, and pretend that they’re in her room at Brakebills, post-party, pre-the Beast, pre-Mike, pre-Alice and Penny and Julia and Fen and Idri and pre-fucking-Fillory, the three of them, before any of it, before - like if she only wishes hard enough - 

She doesn’t close her eyes. Because that’s a sucker’s game: there’s no going back (outside of time travel, but that usually just fucks you over in newer, more creative ways), and Margo hasn’t believed in that kind of wishing in a very long time.

She _had_ told Quentin about her dad. Not the whole blah-de-blah daddy issues sob story, fuck no, obviously not - but about the movies, the dad movies, yeah, she’d - back when his dad had just been diagnosed with cancer, and Quentin had come back from spending the weekend with him, had been sitting blank-faced on the couch in the Cottage throwing back one of Todd’s shitty coolers, and Margo’s a stone-cold bitch but she’s not a fucking monster, so she’d sat next to him, put an actual grown-up drink in his hand, and asked about his dad, because that’s what you _do_ , when there’s nothing else to do, when magic or money or murder can’t solve the problem, can’t fix it - except she’d been expecting an equally perfunctory, “He’s okay,” in reply, the way she would have done (the way Eliot would have done), but instead Quentin had told her about watching old movies all weekend - “like we used to, the ones that were always playing in the afternoon on cable, you know?” and she’d smiled, had said, “Yeah, I know, I used to - with my dad,” before she’d thought better of it (and Quentin always does this to her, pulls these honest answers out of her without even trying, like some kind of weird ‘I’ll show you mine if you show me yours’ game except with, like, emotional vulnerability), so they’d talked about watching _Jaws_ and _The Blues Brothers_ and _Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid_ until you could quote all the good parts from memory, although Quentin’s dad apparently was more of a baseball/World War II movie guy, _The Natural_ , _The Great Escape_ , _Saving Private Ryan_ ; while Margo’s dad had preferred cops-and-robbers and gangster flicks, _Goodfellas_ , _The Godfather_ , Pacino and De Niro in the diner in _Heat_ , Clint Eastwood with a .44 Magnum and a smirk - “do you feel lucky, punk?” and Margo - she’d groaned and flung herself back on the couch, shoved at Quentin’s leg with her foot, had said, “Fucking white guys and their power fantasies, I swear to god, all of it, all of them -” and Quentin had laughed, had said, “Okay, like - not that you’re wrong, but -” “No, no buts, shut up, I don’t want to hear it - save it for your Reddit film-nerd forum -”

Not that that there’s anything wrong with a good power fantasy, in Margo’s humble opinion (she says, as the queen of her very own magical fucking kingdom), it’s more that - she’d watched the movies, sitting next to her dad on his sleek leather sofa, the heroes and the villains and the anti-heroes, their triumphs and tragedies, their rises and falls, had learned those stories by heart - and it’s infuriating, and humiliating, to remember how long it had taken her to realize that no one, up to and very definitely including her dad, had ever thought that those fantasies could belong to _her_ \- (the women in the background, always, waiting: to be rescued maybe, or loyally waiting for their man, or secretly betraying him to who-the-fuck-ever, or waiting to be fucked or married or cheated on or left, just - waiting) and it doesn’t ruin those movies exactly (she knows it’s not really about the movies, or not only about them - like, no shit, any third-rate therapist could tell you that), but the bitter taste of it is always there, even now - even now that she -

Eliot’s looking at her, head tilted, is starting to ask - so Margo says, “Tell me about the shark.”

Eliot watches her for another moment, then shrugs, says, “We found a tooth lodged in the bottom of one of the boats that got attacked, so -”

“Right, easy, locator spell -”

“Bingo, but he wasn’t out in open water, like we thought he’d be, he was hiding in some little cove near Diddletit-by-the-Sea - _yes_ , that’s the name of the town, Fillory is a lewd Lewis Carollian nightmare, can we please skip the commentary - ”

Margo closes her mouth. Quentin sniggers, but says nothing.

“Thank you,” Eliot says. “Anyway, once we got to the cove, the whole thing was anti-climactic as shit. Not exactly the grand battle of man - or magician - versus ferocious killer shark as the personification of nature red in tooth and claw that I was expecting -”

“That’s really a misrepresentation of - like, _Jaws_ actually does have a lot to answer for when it comes to the demonization of sharks in the public, uh - thing, consciousness,” Quentin says. “Did you know we kill fucking millions of sharks every year? Julia always -”

He stops, goes silent; swallows hard enough that Margo hears the _click_ noise his throat makes. Margo meets Eliot’s eyes, solemn - _should we?_ \- and Eliot moves his head in the tiniest of head-shakes - _no_.

He’s right, there’s no fucking point, forget what she’d been thinking before about Quentin and emotional vulnerability; the truth is Quentin is a stubborn fucking asshole, and he shares exactly as much as he wants to share, and that’s fucking it. So they’ve heard every boozy, tear-and-guilt-soaked detail about Niffin-Alice, but pretty much zip about Julia, aside from the barest of bare-bone sketches about what went down.

(Hell, even with Alice - “But - Jesus fuck, Q, why didn’t you tell us before?” Eliot had said, rubbing Quentin’s back while he’d been horking up fuck knows how much wine over the edge of a balcony that first night - Quentin hadn’t answered, but hours later, after the night had tipped over to early morning, Margo and Eliot sacked out on one of lounges in the throne room, Quentin a limp miserable weight between them, he’d said, voice rasped to nearly nothing, “She could be killing people right now.”

“She’s not,” Eliot had said immediately. “That’s not Alice.”

 _She’s not Alice_ , Margo hadn’t said. She hadn’t had to, they all knew what Niffins were, they’d all seen Niffin-Alice advancing towards them in that clearing, cold and merciless and implacable - who knows, maybe the creature-formerly-known-as-Alice wasn’t killing people, maybe she had better things to do. Or maybe she was out there somewhere ripping people apart just for shits and giggles, just because she was bored; pretending otherwise was a fucking fairy-tale.

“No.” Quentin had shaken his head. “She could be. And I let her go anyway. I couldn’t - I let her go.”

“It was a shit choice, either way,” Margo had said (her throat tight, something sharp-toothed and awful gnawing deep in her chest). “Sometimes you have to -” _Choose the least worst. Choose what you think you can live with, or what you can’t survive without._

“At least there’s still a chance,” Eliot had said. He’d touched Quentin’s shoulder briefly, the non-wooden one - his hand hovering, tentative. “A chance to fix it -”

Quentin had only shaken his head again.

Margo had looked away. There had been a fairy standing in the corner, watching them with flat black eyes. She’d blinked, and it had been gone.)

Margo says, “So you caught the shark?”

“He gave himself up as soon as - I used Franklin’s Summoning, yanked him out of the water,” Eliot says glumly. “And he just started - _apologizing_ , and I don’t know if sharks can cry, but it sounded like crying, and it was -” He tosses his hand through the air. “Horrible. And embarrassing. It was all a real estate scam - apparently there’s a centuries-long grudge match between the fishermen and the mermaids over fishing territory near the harbor, so some asshole trying to buy up beachfront property paid him in rare Fillorian river tuna to stir up trouble between them -”

“’Trouble’? That kid fucking died,” Margo says.

Quentin jerks his head towards her, glassy eyes going wide. “Someone died? I didn’t know that.”

“Everyone was talking about it at court this morning,” Margo says. “But that’s right, you weren’t there.”

“I was -”

“Massively hungover?”

“Sleeping in.” Quentin frowns, chews at his lip. “A kid died?”

“It was an accident,” Eliot says. “No one was supposed to get hurt -”

“How do you eat someone by accident?” 

“He didn’t eat anyone, the kid drowned,” Eliot says. He leans his head back against the wall, closes his eyes; seems abruptly weary - of the story, of the night, of all of it. “His name was Torly, he was eleven years old, he was on his father’s fishing boat, and when the shark rammed the boat he got caught in the wreckage. They couldn’t get him out in time.”

Eliot stops talking, and the silence hangs heavy for a long moment; Margo can hear the soft buzzes and cracklings and chirps of the castle gardens at night drifting through the open window. Eliot’s eyes are still closed, and Margo watches him: the tumbling disheveled waves of his hair (actually disheveled tonight, not his usual artfully undone doneness), the familiar distinguished line of his profile and the now also familiar pull of tension around his mouth (could be worse, could be the lax motionlessness of a post-dead-golem coma, Eliot sleeping that unnatural sleep and not waking up, not waking up, not waking up no matter how much she’d threatened and and argued and pleaded, or the kiss she’d pressed to his slack mouth, desperately, pathetically, because there are no happily-ever-after-ending-atheists in a foxhole - the roil of sick panic in her gut as their enemies had circled closer and the Wellspring had kept fucking failing, Fen’s frightened, beseeching face - _I’m gonna take care of you_ -)

She swallows, glances away. Quentin is watching Eliot too.

“But someone did get hurt,” Quentin says.

She’s too hot suddenly, can’t stand the room’s stuffiness, or the warm sweaty press of Quentin’s bare skin against her own - she pulls away, sits up straighter on the bed and lifts her hands in a casting, sends the broad paper fans on her dressing table whirling up into the air into a stable spin, forming an impromptu ceiling fan. 

“What?” Eliot says.

“No one was supposed to get hurt, but someone did,” Quentin says, his voice brittle. “So it doesn’t really matter what was supposed to happen, or what they meant to happen, does it?”

“Of course it matters, intent still matters,” Margo says. “That’s the difference between murder and manslaughter or negligent homicide or whatever -”

“Ever heard of the felony murder rule? Actions have fucking consequences -”

“No shit, actions have consequences? Thanks so much for that groundbreaking insight, shame you waited until now to give half a shit about literally anything happening in what’s supposed to be _your_ goddamn kingdom -”

“Okay, since it’s ass o’clock in the morning and nobody here is actually an expert on Fillorian jurisprudence, let’s cool it on the _Law and Order_ LARP-ing,” Eliot says, opening his eyes and turning to stare at them.

Margo tilts her face up towards her magically rotating fans, lets the breeze wash over her nose and cheeks. Quentin twitches his shoulders in an angry, awkward horizontal shrug. 

“Anyway, as it turns out, the wheels of interspecies justice in Fillory move very slowly,” Eliot says. “Choosing the venue for the trial alone, when the defendent is aquatic and the victim is terrestial? That’s gonna be a bitch and a half, so this mess probably won’t end up in our laps for a few weeks at least.” He raises an inquiring eyebrow in Margo’s direction. “I have to say, I’m a little surprised that you’re the one arguing clemency due to mitigating circumstances -”

“Now who’s armchair _Law-and-Order_ ing?” Quentin mutters.

“I was arguing lack of intent, not mitigating circumstances, you dick,” Margo says. “And what the fuck do you want me to say, Eliot? Off with his fucking head? Because that’s my role here, right? To be your hatchet man, to tell you all the shit that you don’t want to hear, make all the tough calls that you -” _That you don’t have the balls to make_ , but she doesn’t say it, she stops herself in time. 

“That’s not what I -” Eliot’s blinking at her in surprise. “Although. I mean, historically, yes, kind of?”

Historically, yes, exactly - is the thing; historically, she’s the one who said: execute the assassin, start a war, if you can’t trust your wife, then get the fuck rid of her - because Margo _is_ a wartime consigliere, she’s Fillory fucking Clinton, she’s the one left holding the bag while Eliot’s off fighting a duel to decide the fate of their whole goddamn kingdom, a duel he can’t win without magic even as the Wellspring’s making like it’s the sweltering summer of ‘77 in New York fucking City - so she’d made a deal, she’d made the hard choice, the only choice, and after all that Eliot had shown up (alive, _alive_ ) arm-in-arm with Idri, a smile on his face and his troth and half the Wellspring pledged away, like he’d saved the fucking day, like everything was just fucking peachy now - 

Historically, Margo has shot a man in the chest for Eliot. In real life, there’s no time for bad-ass one-liners, there’s just - grab the gun out of your bag, safety off, aim and shoot - and (a man is dead) a random fucking Neitherlands asshole who was about to kill Eliot is dead, and Eliot is alive, and that’s all that matters, isn’t it?

(Julia had sat across from her in the carriage on their almost entirely silent ride to the One-Way Forest, had looked out the window and smiled, tapping her tattooed fingers on the edge of the window and humming softly to herself. 

“Sorry your magical abortion got fucked up,” was all Margo had said.

Julia had turned to look at her, her eyebrows raised, quizzical, like she couldn’t quite figure out what Margo was talking about.

Then she had smiled again.

“Yeah, well, c’est la vie,” Julia had said, and shrugged, and for one crazy fucked-up second Margo had envied her, because Margo could see the truth of it in her eyes: Julia truly did not care, didn’t _care_ , not about a single fucking thing, and Jesus Christ on a motherfucking crutch, what must that feel like? Hollow and empty and light, like having bird bones, like seeing Eliot and Quentin and Alice dead on the floor and knowing only that you _won_ \- )

The door opens. 

“Oh,” Fen says. “Here you all are.”

She stands in the doorway and stares, one hand resting on her belly, hesistant smile on her face, her skin lit rose and gold in the soft candlelight, a Madonna looking for a vacant inn or a comfy stable; and instead finding the three of them sprawled on the bed, sheets rumpled and Margo in her slip and Quentin drunk and half-naked - and Margo’s trying not to squirm, is fucking thrashing under a tidal wave of guilty déjà vu, which is _bullshit_ , because Margo doesn’t do guilt, she’s got absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. (Except - is that another fairy, standing behind Fen in the hall, a flash of ivory gauze and spidery fingers -)

Quentin grabs for his shirt, but Margo’s sitting on it and refuses to move, ignores his pissy glare as he tries to yank it out from under her. Eliot is already shifting his long legs off the bed, moving away from them and saying, “Fen, hey -”

“Something you need, Fen?” Margo says. 

Fen’s smile wavers, then re-solidifies. She steps towards Eliot, doesn’t look at Margo. “I was wondering where you were. You were so late getting back from the harbor -”

“I was just checking in with my fellow monarchs,” Eliot says. “You know, keeping them apprised of the situation.”

“And now they’re - apprised?” Fen says, her eyes drifting over Margo and Quentin, and there’s something in her tone, an acidity eating its way through the brightness. (For all of her dad’s sound and fury about the activities his little princess got up to, it had been her mom who’d given her the gun, who had dropped it onto her bureau with the same airy carelessness with which she’d dropped designer purses whenever she was trying to apologize for her latest parental failings, the same way she’d dropped a box of condoms after the Ray Latanza incident and said, “Honey, if you’re going to fool around with boys, at least protect yourself -”) 

“Fully apprised,” Margo says, smiles sweetly and undulates deeper into the sheets and closer to Quentin, who’s lying prone again with his arm thrown across his eyes, his shirt-retrieval efforts abandoned. “We’re done with him, you can have him back now.” 

“Thanks,” Fen says.

“Right, good job with the apprising, everyone,” Eliot says, “very successful, go team. Good night, Bambi, good night, Q,” and pushes himself forward and up out of the bed, his hand pressing against Quentin’s bare arm for a moment before sliding off; Margo sees Quentin shiver, lift his wrist away from his eyes to watch Eliot rise from the bed.

“See you in the morning,” Margo says.

“Yes, actually, bright and early - we really have to start tackling the wedding invite list,” Eliot says, clapping his hands together, going a bit wild around the eyes, and Margo tries not to let her smile drop too obviously. She catches Fen’s eye; Fen’s mouth tilts at one corner, and for the space of exactly one second they understand each other perfectly. 

“Sounds fantastic, can’t wait.”

Eliot lingers at the foot of the bed, despite his good-nights, and Fen hovers next to him, says, “Do you want to - I can go, if you’re not - I’ll just wait up until you’re done -”

“No, no, of course not, that’s - it’s late, I’m not going to make you -”

They drift towards the door, and Margo sighs, looks at Quentin next to her - he’s not watching Eliot and Fen leave, but staring into the middle distance, his hand tracing a meandering line down from his collarbone - tracing what must be the seam between his chest and his wooden shoulder, she realizes after a second, invisible to the eye but not to touch - 

“Let me guess,” Margo says. “Mary Ellen Moffat. She broke your heart.”

Quentin stares at her, then laughs, low and jagged. “That’s the story, isn’t it?” He closes his eyes, curls his fingers into a fist, resting tight and clenched on his chest. “But - really, it was me. Who did all the breaking.”

(He’d woken her up in the middle of the night, last time - she’d been dragged out of sleep by the noises he’d been making, opened her eyes in a near pitch-dark room, moonlight through the window patching one wall in a gray haze, and Quentin gasping in the bed next to her, scrambling and clawing like he was trying to escape -

“What - what are you -” she’d said, still half-asleep, reaching out to him in the dark.

Quentin had twisted away from her hand, had sobbed something garbled, nonsensical, then, clear as a bell: “I couldn’t move.”

“What,” she’d said again, “what the fuck, we’re in Fillory, we’re - you’re okay -” and had finally pulled herself together enough to cast, call a ball of light into being in the palm of her hand.

Quentin had lifted his hand to cover his face, then had frozen, crouched on the bed, his legs pulled up and his shoulders hunched.

“Hey,” Margo had said. “Are you -”

“Jesus, Margo, knock it off,” Quentin had said, his face still hidden. “That’s right in my fucking eyes.” 

Margo had huffed and let her hand drop, throwing them back into darkness, then let her whole body drop back onto the bed too. “Excuse me for giving a shit. Shut the fuck up and let me sleep, then.”

She had shoved her face against her pillow, wriggled around, trying to get comfortable, had watched Quentin’s dark outline ease itself down, lying curled away with his back to her. 

The room had been quiet, and she had heard him breathing, unsteady, too quick, and she’d reached out again and laid her hand flat against his back. He’d taken a deep breath (her hand moving with it, the hangover-fever warmth of his skin through his shirt), but he’d said nothing, so she’d left it there until his breathing had evened out, until she’d slid back into sleep.)

“Shit happens,” Margo says, and Quentin snorts.

“Sure, let’s go with that.”

From the doorway, Eliot says to Fen, soft, “You look tired, let’s go to bed,” and Fen looks up at him with shining eyes, says, “Oh, um, it’s just - bad dreams,” and Margo - nothing’s broken yet, there’s still time to fix it, time to make Eliot understand, because that’s what she’s here for, isn’t it, to make the hard fucking choices, to make the choices Eliot won’t, even if it feels like - like she’s trapped in a small boat, bobbing on a dark sea, the sharks with their teeth and their black eyes, like dolls’ eyes, circling closer and closer, waiting -

“Good night, Margo,” Fen says from the doorway, gives her a little wave.

“Good night,” Margo says, and breathes in and out. Nothing’s broken yet, nothing’s irreparable. She’s still got time.

~

**Author's Note:**

> There are a whole load of references to _Jaws_ in here, as well as _The Godfather_ , the most overt being "Mary Ellen Moffat, she broke your heart" and Margo being "a wartime consigliere". 
> 
> The title is from the traditional British naval song "Spanish Ladies", which Quint sings in _Jaws_. The song Quentin is singing at the beginning is "Show Me the Way to Go Home" by Irving King, also sung in _Jaws_.
> 
> I also want to cite [The U.S.S. Indianapolis](https://sga-flashfic.livejournal.com/218541.html), a very different story written more than a decade ago in another fandom, but from which I definitely borrowed the _Jaws_ scar conversation scene at the end, so thank you for still impacting my writing all these years later.


End file.
